Robin Abcarian | The need to break rules

5:47 PM,
Jun. 24, 2013

Written by

Robin Abcarian
| Los Angeles Times

He brought down an American general. He could brutalize his peers. But Michael Hastings was never accused of not telling the truth. And given the outrage that often accompanied the publication of his stories, that's saying something.

Hastings is the Buzzfeed reporter and contributing Rolling Stone editor who died last week in a one-car crash on Highland Avenue in Los Angeles. Video taken just after the crash shows a mangled car fully engulfed in flames. It looks like something out of a war zone, terrain with which Hastings was already quite familiar.